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I started Intelligent Games (IG) in 1988 and I hired my first employee and moved into real offices in 1993 [I sold the company and left in 2000]. In that time we released sixteen titles, which together sold over two million copies. The company grew to more than sixty-five people and worked with some of the biggest publishers in the business: EA Sports, Westwood Studios, LEGO and Hasbro. We got there without debt and without external investment. It is from this experience that I am writing this article – as they say in America: ‘your mileage may differ’.

A voice crackled over the radio: “Orlando Approach, 120 Foxtrot Tango, you are cleared for the space coast tour, contact NASA Tower on 126.2.” This is how my first encounter with Kennedy Space Centre, on Florida’s east coast, began. At fifteen hundred feet at the controls of a Piper Warrior, I flew North past the launch pads, the vehicle assembly building – so big it has its own weather system, or should have – and then down the almost endless runway where the Shuttle lands. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the sunlight sparkled on the water on both sides of the cape. It was an impressive, even awesome, sight.

Sarah’s team was facing a team productivity crisis. She was responsible for a big launch event at an upcoming trade show: colleagues to wrangle, suppliers to manage, finances to sort out, floor space to book and a thousand other things to do.

In 2003, Nicholas Carr, author of the Rough Type blog, asked the provocative question: “Does IT matter?” His article appeared in the prestigious Harvard Business Review. It was a closely argued, well-written article, which triggered what The Economist called “an existentialist debate” in the IT industry.